


Aces High

by feverbeats



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:53:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25384852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/pseuds/feverbeats
Summary: Finally, the only thing he can't walk away from is Midgar. And then they drop the plate.
Relationships: Hojo/Reeve Tuesti, Scarlet/Reeve Tuesti
Kudos: 6





	Aces High

**Author's Note:**

> Additional warnings: mentions of drug use. Pairings are in the background; it's mostly gen.
> 
> So I'm back into FFVII after all this time, just like everyone else! This is mostly to get me writing again. I was definitely writing Reeve-centric fic called Aces High with a heavy-handed playing card metaphor in like 2006, so I've grown a lot as a person.

Reeve sometimes thinks he's never lived anywhere real.

He's born in Mideel, where the tourism around the hot springs is the town's only redeeming feature. He gets his degree online, uploading endless blueprints that he draws up in his childhood bedroom. For all that, he isn't a loser--he doesn't think. He's good with people, especially women. He gets very good at amatuer poker, playing in the evenings with his parents' friends.

After he gets his degree, he moves out. He travels, but he never settles anywhere. It's months before he stops at the Gold Saucer and learns that there's something he's good at besides architecture. His hobby quickly becomes a lifestyle, then a career. He's not just good at poker, he's good at counting cards, and a few magic tricks on the side. It's another six months before he moves on, pockets heavy with money from gambling and fortune-telling.

He also leaves with a little bit of a drug problem, but nothing serious. Not mako, or anything like that. It's easy to keep that up when he hits Costa Del Sol. It's another fake town. It only exists for the tourist trade. That's fine with Reeve. Everyone here is as rich as they are gullible, and Reeve is still good with people. He wanders the beach in a flower-printed button-down and shorts, a pack of cards in his hand, making friends, drinking beer, and racking up more cash.

It's not fulfilling. Sometimes it's not even fun, but Reeve isn't someone who knows how to quit.. He's still there for a year before President Shinra comes to visit.

At the time, people are only just starting to understand that Shinra isn't just president of an electric power company. The way people refer to him starts to sound more like he's president of more than that. He has a villa in Costa Del Sol, and Reeve can't wait to see if he can gamble Shinra out of a few gil. He's bored, and it sounds like a challenge.

President Shinra is good with people, too. Reeve runs into him at a bar, and they get to talking. Reeve finds himself charmed. He does make a few gil. More than. He also talks a lot, over more drinks than he should have.

When he tries to trace what happens next, he can't. They play cards, they talk, they drink. Somewhere in there Reeve shows the president his portfolio. Over the course of a few weeks, they go from gambling together to Reeve accepting a job offer.

It seems like an absolute dream. A chance to shape the future of the whole _world_. Almost unlimited resources to build with, and the freedom, and the time. He takes the job without thinking twice. He's proud of himself for breaking out of the inertia of beach life.

Once he's on the board, there's no question of walking away. He'd love to say it's just about professional opportunities, and that he's not a sucker, but he is. He is, and Scarlet is amazing. She's not like anyone Reeve has ever met. (She's worse.) She's young and funny and beautiful. She's cruel in a way he finds absolutely charming. He's caught like an easy mark back at the Saucer.

He doesn't get along especially well with the rest of the board. Palmer makes him uncomfortable. Heidegger makes him _very_ uncomfortable. Heidegger thinks Reeve is a fag (not true, but not untrue), and he's too friendly with Scarlet to think much of Reeve. Gast is pleasant to Reeve, but Gast is soon replaced by Hojo. Those circumstances should make Reeve more nervous than they do. Hojo has a certain charm himself.

The other places Reeve lives are Nibelheim and Midgar. Nibelheim doesn't feel real because when he lives there, it's just a temporary base while Midgar is coming into its own. Midgar doesn't feel real because--Does building your own clubhouse as a child feel real? Midgar feels like a dream. It's already a city, but it becomes Reeve's very own dream. It springs out of his head and into steel and iron, towering above the slums.

Until the dream becomes a nightmare. 

It would be easier to say Reeve wakes up one day and things are horrifying. But it's a gradual slide, so gradual that he doesn't notice until it's too late. Years down the road, the fake city he's built around himself starts to feel haunted. There are ghosts in the machine.

Reeve has been here long enough that a part of him knows he'll never make it out alive, that when the Shinra building falls, when the city falls, he'll fall, too. He can hear the whispers of the ghosts in the wiring, no matter what he's doing.

Scarlet is the other dream that becomes a nightmare. Reeve used to think they were two of a kind, but he eventually realizes she has more in common with Heideggar. She uses her sexuality as a weapon, and eventually she uses everything as a weapon. She gets colder, and as Reeve withdraws in horror, he finds himself spending more time in Hojo's lab. Hojo is smart, too. And he's funny sometimes, and Reeve lets himself hope all over again that he could find something worth staying for.

But Sephiroth dies, and Hojo becomes more unhinged, and Reeve is still caught, caught.

He still keeps a deck of cards with him, and he shuffles them when he's too anxious to do anything else with his hands. He's always been better at gambling than fortune-telling, but he has a deck of tarot cards, too. He thinks about them, sometimes, and about the board. He knows which card would represent him. But he's not such a fool as all that. He's just too much of a coward to do anything about it.

He's not on drugs anymore. Not illegal ones. But he has to stay awake somehow, and the amount of work is crushing him. He sometimes thinks that every bad thing that happens in the city is on him. Maybe it is.

Finally, the only thing he can't walk away from is Midgar. And then they drop the plate.

It's late. Hours after they do it. Reeve is awake, even though it's, what, three in the morning? He's still watching the clock. It all feels like a terrible joke. He gambled and he lost. He wasn't equipped to manage a long con. He's done.

Except he's not done. He still has one thing. They want him to use it for espionage, so he will. Whatever that means, whatever that looks like.

He spends twelve hours a day trying to haul the city back into functioning order, and then another eight working on his other project. It has AI, so he doesn't need to be looking through its eyes all the time, but he finds himself drawn to it. Drawn to Avalanche.

He still doesn't walk away. It's too late for that, but maybe it's not too late to help save a handful of people.

He can hear little whispers running through the wires in his body, the ones that connect him to Cait Sith. Maybe that's another form of addiction.

The end is coming, one way or another.. Reeve can't summon the energy to gamble on any other outcome, so he's not sure what's keeping him going after Cloud and the others.

But the good thing about being a gambler is that he knows when to change the rules.

Alone in his office in the dark, Reeve takes out his battered tarot deck. He shuffles, trying to remember the feeling of being in Costa Del Sol with his whole life ahead of him. It's almost too dark for him to see what he's drawn, but with the press of a button, he calls up lights from the wires at his fingertips.

The tower card stares up at him. A shining pinnacle, reaching to the heavens, beset by fire, lightning, and water. A catastrophe. A disaster. If he plays his cards right, a fresh start.

Time to bet the house.


End file.
